1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a microscope objective lens and, more particularly, to a metal microscope objective lens. Furthermore, the present invention relates to a microscope using the microscope objective lens.
2. Related Background Art
A conventional dry-system microscope objective lens has a lens arrangement disclosed in, e.g., Japanese Patent Publication No. 4-26446.
More specifically, a conventional dry-system microscope objective lens has a front group G.sub.1 having positive refracting power and a rear group G.sub.2 having negative refracting power, as shown in FIG. 1. Furthermore, the front group G.sub.1 having positive refracting power has, in the following order from the object side, a positive meniscus lens element with a concave surface facing the object side, a positive cemented lens component, and a meniscus lens component with a convex surface facing the object side. The rear group G.sub.2 having negative refracting power has a cemented lens of two negative lenses and one positive lens.
As shown in FIG. 1, in the front group G.sub.1, a lens nearest to the image side is a meniscus lens with a concave surface facing the object side, which is obtained by cementing a biconvex single lens and a biconcave single lens to each other. The cemented lens, nearest to the image side, in the front group G.sub.1 has almost no refraction effect, as can be seen from FIG. 1.